anthropic buying rare books
Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude chatbot, purchased and destructively scanned millions of used physical print books to train its models. The operation, codenamed “Project Panama,” involved bulk-buying books, slicing off their spines to feed them through high-speed scanners, and recycling the paper to ensure legal compliance. [1, 2, 3]
The Scale: The company spent millions of dollars to acquire and process millions of print volumes. [1]
The Process: Under an initiative led by former Google Books veteran Tom Turvey, Anthropic used third-party services to strip hardcovers and paperbacks, slice off the bindings, scan every page into text-searchable PDFs, and discard the physical copies. [1, 2]
The Strategy: The process allowed Anthropic to leverage the U.S. first-sale doctrine. By physically owning the books, they argued that digitizing them—and then destroying them so the digital files wouldn't compete with the original market—constituted legal "fair use" for AI training. [1, 2, 3]
Bulk Sourcing: Anthropic sourced the majority of its materials from major used book distributors and retailers like Better World Books and World of Books. [1]
Acquisition Proposals: Planning documents showed the team explored purchasing copies from the New York Public Library and well-known retailers like The Strand in New York City, though the Strand later confirmed they did not end up providing books to Anthropic. [1]
Rare Books Controversy: While initial reports and some leaked documents discussed aspirations to acquire a massive volume of print literature, there is no evidence Anthropic targeted rare, one-of-a-kind historical manuscripts. Rather, they focused on high-quality, professionally edited prose to train their language models. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Legal and Industry Backlash
Copyright Rulings: In a major 2025 copyright ruling, a U.S. district judge found that scanning legally purchased physical books for AI training can fall under "fair use," solidifying Anthropic's approach as a legally sound method for data acquisition. [1, 2, 3]
The $1.5 Billion Settlement: Despite the favorable ruling on physical scanning, Anthropic faced separate allegations regarding the use of pirated and illegally torrented e-books in earlier datasets. The company settled this specific litigation for $1.5 billion, resulting in payouts for eligible authors. [1, 2, 3]
Public Reaction: The practice sparked massive outrage from authors, archivists, and literary advocates, who condemned the systematic destruction of millions of physical print books as cultural vandalism. [1, 2]
Read more about the legal challenges surrounding the initiative in coverage from Ars Technica or the Washington Post. [1, 2]
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